I read this really great article by Nicki Roth, posted on the Bridgespan Website . She talks about how, too often leaders do not take a good look at themselves when the organization is in need of change. They look at other things like their staff, boards, funders, etc.

In the time that I have been coaching nonprofit executives, I can see a major distinction between those who are going to serve long and prosper and those who are not. Strong leaders are interested in constantly learning and improving their leadership ability. Just as they want to develop their employees, they want to develop themselves.

The best athletes, review their game and work on areas of improvement. The beauty of it is, we are not perfect – which means we can constantly improve.

Here is a great excerpt from Roth’s post:

How do you know the change has to come from you?

Honest self-assessment starts with asking the right questions. Explore your need to change by answering the following:

Have you received feedback that you need to shift gears? Have you heard specific recommendations like “you need to be more decisive” or “you need to focus more attention on the daily management issues”?

Do you dread walking into specific meetings or interacting with certain individuals? Do you find yourself making excuses to not show up?

Do you feel frustrated or powerless in getting others to make necessary changes?

Have you set yourself apart from everyone else? Are you asking others to do one thing and you are doing another?

Is there buzz in the office about you that makes you feel defensive, disheartened or angry?

If you answered yes to any/all of these questions then it’s likely that you are the one that needs to make some changes.

Do you have a good way of describing your professional business so that the person listening is interested enough to ask questions or ask for your card? In her article, Deborah Grayson Riegel points out that we often don’t sound “real” when we give our pitch. Give your elevator pitch to someone who cares about you and if his or her first response is “what?” then you need to take Riegel’s tips.

I especially like her tip about using common vernacular. Jargon only means something to someone in your industry. The person on the metaphorical elevator, may not be in your industry and will not understand what you mean.

I will add one tip that Reigel leaves out – when the person lobs the question, “What do you do?” Do not start your sentence with “So” because it is an unnecessary affectation and so over used.

]]>http://sector3report.com/archives/565/feed0Internal vs. External Does Matterhttp://sector3report.com/archives/554
http://sector3report.com/archives/554#commentsMon, 03 Dec 2012 21:52:20 +0000Beth Myershttp://sector3report.com/?p=554I just read Susan Battley’s article about success rates for insider chief executives versus outsider chief executives. I must admit, the research surprised me a little. Studies have shown that Chief Executives who are promoted from within are often more successful than those who are brought in from another company. In fact, CEO’s who are brought in from the outside actually have twice the failure rates as those who are promoted from within. The more successful CEO’s who were hired externally, were those who brought in a new executive team of leaders.

I found myself surprised by this because I have often heard how the internal candidate would have too much bias against them merely due to history, whereas the external candidate is a blank slate. What is not surprising, and I think the real point of the story, is the impact of culture on success. It stands to reason that if the culture is positive, the organization is doing well, and the internal candidate has been developed to lead, success will result.

If the culture is not good then the internal or external candidate must shift it by changing the players in the game. Under those terms, success will happen, but, it takes time.

You are on Twitter and wondering what the heck is all this #GivingTuesday hype you keep seeing, but you don’t ask because you want to be cool. And you are cool – you are on twitter after all. I write this post in an effort to help you maintain your coolness.

#GivingTuesday is a way to promote the importance of giving this holiday season to a nonprofit/charitable organization. Some very clever people came up with an idea of starting a new tradition and using social media to encourage people to “get out the give” on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

I am very excited about all of the activity I have seen so far, and I hope that next year, more nonprofits will unleash the power of #GivingTuesday in advance of the actual day.

Research proves that the reason people give is because they are asked to give. I think we should do more than just ask people to give; we need to tell people why we donate money to charity. Now I have not done the research here, but I believe people are more likely to give when they are surrounded by people who give – it becomes part of their inner circle norm. So here is my philanthropic profile: My largest donations are given to the United Way and Big Brothers Big Sisters. They are my largest gifts because I am closely connected to them. Then I give multiple smaller gifts to causes that my friends and family ask me to support like March of Dimes, St. Jude’s, and Girl Scouts, to name a few.

So, stay cool and support #GivingTuesday – donate to a charitable mission that is important to you and has the structure in place to use your money wisely. If you do not have the money to give, that is okay, you can still participate in #GivingTuesday by giving your time – volunteer for a nonprofit organization in your community.

]]>http://sector3report.com/archives/544/feed0A New Excellent Resourcehttp://sector3report.com/archives/531
http://sector3report.com/archives/531#commentsWed, 18 Jul 2012 19:02:54 +0000Beth Myershttp://sector3report.com/?p=531Some amazing work just came out from Bridgestar and they are giving it away! If you are not familiar with Bridgestar, you will want to get acquainted with their work soon. This has been a tremendous resource for me as a nonprofit leader. Bridgestar is an initiative of the Bridgespan group. Bridgespan is a group of highly talented and brilliant nonprofit consultants. I first became acquainted with their work at Big Brothers Big Sisters. We were developing a strategic plan for our national network and hired Bridgespan to help us through the process. Bridgestar is a tremendous resource for nonprofit leadership. Their latest work is something you must read and figure out when to implement - Plan A: How Successful Nonprofits Develop Their Future Leaders.

Is your organization focused on strengthening its leadership and building a pipeline of leaders? If you truly believe in the greatness of your mission, then you have an obligation to ensure you are not putting that mission at-risk. Further, you are not fulfilling your obligation to your mission if you are not investing in leadership.

Too often this focus on leadership is neglected because so many funders only want to fund programs and not leadership. Far too many investors fail to recognize that the best return on investment is in building and strengthening staff and board leadership of nonprofit organizations.

“Linking leadership to the mission is a highly effective way to prove that leadership development, far from being ancillary to an organization’s real work, is integral to it.”

I encourage all of you who strive to do great work, read this guide, get inspired and find the resources to implement this work in your organization – your mission deserves it.

Have you noticed how many article titles have numbers in them? You know: 10 Places You Must Travel, 5 Tips for Better Tweets, 3 Reasons to Eat Better, …..Obviously, as readers, we are fascinated by lists – otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of these articles. Here is one I clicked on recently: “8 Rules For Creating A Passionate Work Culture.” My favorites are rule #2: “Communicate” and #3: “Tend to the Weeds.”

Communicate – Once you have the right people, you need to sit down regularly with them and discuss what is going well and what isn’t. It’s critical to take note of your victories, but it’s just as important to analyze your losses. A fertile culture is one that recognizes when things don’t work and adjusts to rectify the problem. As well, people need to feel safe and trusted, to understand that they can speak freely without fear of repercussion. That is so true and I wonder if it is happening in your place of work. Are you celebrating AND analyzing? Our failures and mistakes are so important to our development and growth both personally and professionally, but too often they are treated as negatives. It is only negative if you don’t admit, analyze and grow from things you try that don’t work out.Tend to the Weeds – A culture of passion capital can be compromised by the wrong people. One of the most destructive corporate weeds is the whiner. Whiners aren’t necessarily public with their complaints. Instead, they move through the organization, speaking privately, sowing doubt, strangling passion. In order to effectively tend to the weeds you have to listen to what you do not want to hear and what is very hard to believe. I am not suggesting paranoia, but be open when you have a feeling or you are questioning if someone might be quietly disloyal. I ignored signs and was completely shocked to find that one of my seemingly stellar employees was sabotaging me when they disagreed with my position.

So here is the 1 thing I would like you to walk away with (wink): Employees influence their work culture and Leaders craft it. What is the culture of your organization?

]]>http://sector3report.com/archives/519/feed0Strategic Thinkers, Visionary Leadershttp://sector3report.com/archives/509
http://sector3report.com/archives/509#commentsWed, 09 May 2012 19:20:34 +0000Beth Myershttp://sector3report.com/?p=509I had a board member from a nonprofit organization tell me that their board decided they should stop focusing so much on performance measures and consider other means of evaluating their executive. After I stopped choking on the water that I happened to swallow at that very moment, I asked her why? She said because they needed to take into consideration how tough the financial times are right now, and it wasn’t reasonable to make that kind of judgment. In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins did not say great organizations set “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” only when times are prosperous. All nonprofit executives should be evaluated based on performance and the performance goals should be based on what great leaders can achieve. I told my board member friend to ask herself this: does your mission deserve a great leader?

When I played tennis back in high school and college, I learned something really meaningful – you tend to play to the level of your opponent. If I wanted to become better at tennis, then I needed to play against people who were much better than I was, not against those who were equal, or I could easily beat.

I encourage you to read the entire article and the comments. As you see, part of being a great leader is being strategic. So, does your mission deserve a great leader?

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http://sector3report.com/archives/509/feed0San Antonio’s Eastside Promisehttp://sector3report.com/archives/501
http://sector3report.com/archives/501#commentsFri, 16 Mar 2012 15:53:41 +0000Beth Myershttp://sector3report.com/?p=501Last week a spotlight was focused on education in San Antonio. An impressive delegation which included the United Way of Bexar County, City of San Antonio, United Way International, the Department of Education, and Promise Neighborhoods Initiatives toured the targeted schools, Tynan Early Childhood Center, Bowden Elementary, Pershing Elementary, Washington Elementary, Wheatley Middle and Sam Houston High. I was honored to be a part of that delegation as well. Are you aware of the tremendous promise that lies in the Eastside of San Antonio? Specifically, there is a cluster of contiguous neighborhoods just east of downtown, covering approximately 3 square miles. The promise in those neighborhoods thrives in spite of the incredible challenges inherent in low-income, urban areas. With a $25 million grant from the Department of Education, we (residents, students, parents, nonprofits, government and schools) aim to turn that promise into success.

For the past 6 years, I have been involved as a volunteer with the United Way, specifically addressing the drop-out problem in some of the poorest schools in the San Antonio Independent School District. We are not addressing it by implementing a new program – rather, we are mobilizing the parents within the school district. We started with a few parents- some of whom do not speak English – most of whom were too intimidated by the bureaucratic school system to be involved in their children’s school. With the expertise of Presa Community Center staff and Family Service Assn staff, we have engaged parents, and, they in turn have visited with many other parents about the importance of being involved in their children’s education and schools. They started parent rooms at each campus where students and parents can go for support, assistance and fellowship.

We have progressed from having just a few parents involved, to having hundreds of parents involved. Several parents, who were understandly scared to speak in front of a group, went to the capitol last year to advocate for Texas public education. The success of our partnership – involving schools, parents, business volunteers, nonprofits – is what led to the promise neighborhood opportunity.

“I applaud each of the Promise Neighborhood applicants for their leadership,” President Barack Obama said. “They are galvanizing their communities to help offer our children a pathway out of poverty. The winners announced today will deliver a broad array of services to help all young people thrive academically, earn their high school diploma, go on to college, and reach for their dreams.”"Communities across the country recognize that education is the one true path out of poverty,” Secretary Duncan said. “These Promise Neighborhoods applicants are committed to putting schools at the center of their work to provide comprehensive services for young children and students.”

“Promise Neighborhoods recognizes that children need to be surrounded by systems of support inside and outside of the classroom to help them be successful in school and beyond,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

It has been a real honor watching the partnership develop and grow and I want to applaud the United Way for being a true collaborative leader. I think Svante Myrick - the 24 yr old recently elected mayor of Ithica NY – sums it up best when speaking of what led to his success, he says “This is not the story of a self-made man. This is a story of a community that conspired together to raise, you know, a child. I mean, that’s the truth.”

It has been 5 months since I last blogged. A lot has happened during that time: Twitter has become more popular; facebook is going public ; Steve Jobs, Whitney Houston and North Korea’s evil dictator all died; we started a new year; the economy is showing signs of turning around; and I……..completed my graduate work, passing my written and oral comprehensives!

My social media life took a back seat when other priorities demanded my attention. I am finding this experience much like going to the gym – when you get away from it for a while, it is difficult to get back into it. I find myself overwhelmed by all of the things that I could write about, and while trying to narrow it down, I get pulled into other work and end up losing another day. So, I am just going to start this blog post with what piqued my interest today.

The White House Council for Community Solutions worked with The Bridgespan Group to identify effective needle-moving collaboratives (those that have achieved at least 10 percent progress in a community-wide metric), understand the keys to success, and recommend ways to drive more collective impact, particularly to address the challenges of disconnected youth.

They found four common operating principles in these collaborative efforts:

Commitment to long-term involvement;

Involvement of key stakeholders across sectors;

Use of shared data to set agendas and improve results over time;

Engagement of community members as substantive partners.

What I find particularly intriguing is one of the five core elements the Bridgespan group discovered as a contributing success factor:

Effective leadership and governance, with highly respected leaders at the helm who are viewed as neutral, honest brokers and who attract and retain a diverse group of large and small organizations to guide the collaborative forward.

Perhaps that is why it is not easily replicated – it is very difficult to find these leaders. If we are truly straightforward in our identification of leaders, then transformational change will happen.

I was reading an article by Paul Connolly, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. In the article, Connolly discusses how some people propose that the best thing you can fund in a nonprofit is the fundraising arm of the organization. Connolly suggests that tactic is short-sighted:

This evidence is consistent with other research on nonprofit organizational performance that TCC Group has conducted over the past few years. When we analyzed the results of almost 700 nonprofits nationwide that had taken the Core Capacity Assessment Tool survey, and then, through regression analysis, identified the key drivers for those that scored highest on financial sustainability, we determined that fundraising capacity was indeed a substantial factor—but predominantly when combined with robust internal leadership and programmatic learning (see “The Sustainability Formula” report). Likewise, our study last year of 263 nonprofits in Los Angeles County for the Weingart Foundation (see “Fortifying L.A.’s Nonprofit Organizations”) found that fund-development capacity-building tended to lead more to individual knowledge and motivation, while organizational assessment, strategic planning, and board leadership development were more likely to result in institutional change. Fundraising capacity is essential—even a nonprofit with the highest impact programs will not last without it—yet it needs to happen in conjunction with solid leadership and organizational learning.

I think he is completely right. I will continue to preach that, first and foremost, Boards and Funders need to hold their nonprofit leaders accountable. You should demand greatness from your Chief Executive. If you do not – and do not have measures in place to evaluate his or her greatness – then you are doing a disservice to your mission.

So, what should you expect and how should you measure it? You should look for 5 things:

Program outcomes – how effective is your program? Is your organization fulfilling your mission and are you achieving your service goals?

Budget results – Is your organization growing in its revenue capacity, do you have at least 6 months operating reserves? Are you comfortable with the financial management of the organization? What are other investors saying about your service?

Organizational culture – What is the real culture inside the organization? Are employees engaged and doing what they do best EVERY day?

Strategic Direction – is your leader a visionary? Is he/she constantly evaluating the environment and responding without being distracted by the latest idea and losing focus? Is he/she ambitious, yet reasonable?

Leadership Development – is your leader investing in his/her own continued learning and professional development as well as that of the board and staff? What is your chief executive doing to continue to learn and grow as a leader? How specifically is your leader professionally developing the leadership team and staff. What great board development is your chief executive bringing to the table?

I have worked with a lot of nonprofit executives over the years, and I am sorry to say that too few are great chief executives, some are very good and too many are not good. There are many executives that I have really liked and truly believe their heart is in the right place but are not meant to be the Chief. There are others I have met who could be really good and move to great if they were evaluated properly, told the truth, given the proper professional development they need and then held accountable.